With Invers commenting that Voges and Rogers are in their thinking I wonder what that really means. I can't think both would tour and of the 2 Voges has the better shot. Younger and a lower order bat. Rogers would mean messing with Cowan/Warner which I don't think the selectors want to do. If Voges tours is he on the bench or does he slot straight in at 4 or 6?

Contracts have come out with no clear policy explaining them. Steve Waugh has sledged England and Mallet has boosted Sayers while the selectors have gone grave robbing and dug up Voges as a possible tourist. Getting pretty uneasy with the way things are shaping. Particurlarly with a 4 zip drubbing behind us. My major worry is that they'll pick fiddly bitsers instead of specialists to tour. I think thats the type of player Micky Arthur prefers. I saw the offsiders and they preferred specialists. Gideon Haigh might be a better selector than Invers atm.

the current selection panel has publicly stated that they prefer players with skills in multiple disciplines. I'm outraged at some of the selections that have occurred because of this, Glenn Maxwell being one that immediately comes to mind. The test arena is not one for these types of players, and in any case, the selectors are picking the crappy all-rounders over the good ones(Ashley Noffke probably wishes he was playing now).

I want to see specialist batsmen and bowlers (and keepers!) picked who have been performing at shield level. I don;t have any faith that this will happen though, John Inverity is ruining Australian cricket.

there have been a few blunders though. perth. sydney. melbourne arguably. india. contract list. expect a couple for the ashes. when you have major challenges with depth and talent every post needs to be made a winner, starting to feel like the skipper was changed but still sailing on a ship of fools. we still don't have the batsmen, but....

yeah.. I can understand looking for 2 or 3 batsmen in the XI and maybe 4 or 5 in the squad to remain constant across the 3 formats but to publicly state that that is what you are looking for, is confusing. It is one thing to say that future batsmen should look to be good enough to perform in all 3 formats but quite another to say that is how you are gonna base your selections.

We miss you, Fardin. :(. RIP.

Originally Posted by vic_orthdox

In the end, I think it's so utterly, incomprehensibly boring. There is so much context behind each innings of cricket that dissecting statistics into these small samples is just worthless. No-one has ever been faced with the same situation in which they come out to bat as someone else. Ever.

One of the strangest things that has been said by Invers is that they are looking for batsmen who can score in all 3 forms of the game

Sorry mate but there are **** all in world cricket that do that so the chances of us producing 6 are somewhere between nought and zero

It is a weird thing to say and contradicted anyway by the contracts given to guys who can't bat to save themselves in tests. If that has to be his stated aim then I'd atleast wish that in not honouring it, he'd bias for test batsmen.

even if we don't have particularly good batsmen right now, better off picking them than the crappy all-rounders who are even worse. Finding good young batsmen has been a problem for just about every country playing tests, batsmen simply aren't groomed properly to play test cricket, they play too much one-day and t20 cricket as juniors.

even if we don't have particularly good batsmen right now, better off picking them than the crappy all-rounders who are even worse. Finding good young batsmen has been a problem for just about every country playing tests, batsmen simply aren't groomed properly to play test cricket, they play too much one-day and t20 cricket as juniors.

That's always been the case though. Kids don't have time for multi-day cricket, you only start the two innings stuff late in high-school.

Originally Posted by Jimmy Neesham

Root always sets up the innings well. It's nice having BJ down the order to finish the innings off.

even if we don't have particularly good batsmen right now, better off picking them than the crappy all-rounders who are even worse. Finding good young batsmen has been a problem for just about every country playing tests, batsmen simply aren't groomed properly to play test cricket, they play too much one-day and t20 cricket as juniors.

When I first played A-grade, there was virtually no one-day cricket and most games were 2-day affairs played over consecutive weekends

As a batsman, you had to really make an innings count as you might only get 1 innings every 3 weeks (day 1 of first game, day 2 of second) so you would think that it would teach people to value their wickets, etc

Unfortunately, the "evidence' contradicts this as that period coincided with Australia's worst ever ranking - dead last in the mid-80s

IMO, our lack of batting depth atm has little to do with what is being played and more to do with lack of talent